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Gallery Nick Craine: Parchment of Light: The Life & Death of William Shakespeare
To buy a copy of Parchment of Light click here.
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| Nick Craine: Shakespeare's times set in graphic novel format |
Nick Craine attended the Ontario College of Art, and began his career in comic books in 1990. He was commissioned by Canadian filmmaker Bruce McDonald to illustrate adaptations of the films; Hard Core Logo (1996), and Dance Me Outside (1995). His work Portrait of a Thousand Punks: Hard Core Logo (1997) was acclaimed by both critics and illustrators. He has had editorial cartoons appear in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Globe and Mail and Quill & Quire, and has worked as an inker for Marvel Comics. Craine is also a successful and acclaimed musician. He founded the band Black Cabbage in 1993, participated in the creation of two albums, and toured thousands of kilometers across Canada. Since leaving the band, he has released his own solo album, November Moon.
Nick Craine’s three-hundred page graphic novel, Parchment of Light: The Life & Death of William Shakespeare was first unveiled as a twenty four page excerpt in January, 2007 at the Shakespeare:Made in Canada Festival in Guelph. Craine’s method of depicting and adapting the life of William Shakespeare reveals a powerful and comprehensive approach to the life of the Bard, encompassing the theatre as medium (brought to life in graphic novel form), facts, conjecture, allegory, interpretation and song lyrics by The Clash. The project expanded into what Craine calls “an expansive visual telling … a go-to-reference text of the Elizabethan period” rather than just a “play-by-play of the collected facts of his life” (Craine, Nick. “Parchment of Light.” Shakespeare Made in Canada. 23) Contrasting with the twentieth- twenty-first century canonization of Shakespeare as a touchstone of literary greatness, as a masterful genius, a God rather than a person, Craine thinks of Shakespeare as “a punk rocker” who worked “in the gutter of the arts” (Craine, 21-23).
Craine's reclaiming of popular culture spaces in a Shakespearean context, while not uniquely Canadian, plays to an extended historical context in which Canadians have subverted notions of Shakespeare as only a figure to be associated with high art. And, in many ways, Canada's geopolitical position as a former English (and French) colony, make Shakespeare a powerful site for exploring issues related to colonial dependence and independence. Parchment of Light takes its place in that scenario not so much by its content but by its form and the underlying populist aesthetic Craine brings to the work. Of especial intetest is how Craine takes spectatorship, often thought of as a passive act of reception, and transforms it into the underlying impulse behind Shakespeare's own drive to create. In the fragment presented here, Craine offers up a meditation on how spectatorship for Shakespeare (in this case, seeing and hearing Marlowe's work) becomes a form of psychic contagion that inspires Shakespeare. The clever over-turning of the stereotype of the passive spectator is just one of the multiple narrative sleights of hand deployed by Craine in the evocative form of the graphic novel.
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| Nick Craine: Parchment of Light: The Life & Death of William Shakespeare |
Craine considers the motivations of Shakespeare in entering the theatre not as a “passive act of whimsy” but rather as “an entry point of survival” for a man with “no standing in the world” (Craine, 21). The choice to use the genre of graphic novels to tell the story of Shakespeare’s life is, in Craine’s estimation, not only appropriate to “guide the aesthetics” but also to fulfill the underlying theme and to make a poignant comment on so-called “high” versus “low” art (Artist Statement). In his artist’s statement about the novel, Craine avers, “The comic book is the artistic gutter of our times. To portray Will’s life inside a comic strip narrative makes the telling itself a relentless artistic action.” This quasi literary, graphic medium on the margins of high art, according to Craine, “subverts expectations and parallels Will’s own artistic experiences” (Artist Statement).
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| Nick Craine: Parchment of Light: The Life & Death of William Shakespeare |
The twenty-four page excerpt intersperses situations and changes of perspective to establish Shakespeare as “someone on the fringes”; an “obsessive observer” who is striving for inspiration and knowledge (Guelph Mercury, March 15, 2007, Artist Statement). Craine juxtaposes Shakespeare’s life as a child––innocent, imaginative, and searching for knowledge as he catches tadpoles in Stratford-upon-Avon––with his life as a young man––uncertain, thoughtful and searching for inspiration standing as a ‘groundling’ in the Rose Theatre, watching Christopher Marlowe’s play Tamburlaine. Craine utilizes changes of chronological and visual perspective to convey significance and historical fact: Will, for instance, looks at his hands at the theatre as they appear to glow, a visual trope that serves as prelude to and anticipation of his future career. Hearing Marlowe’s lines awakens something dormant in Shakespeare that resonates with an incident in his youth where he attempts to save from death a tadpole he has captured to show his brother. An overhead view of young Shakespeare spitting on the tadpole to try to keep it alive thus becomes linked to creativity as a combination of memory and mortality. In running to his house with the tadpole young Will two labourers as they build gallows in Shakespeare’s home town (Stratford), indicating a world with which Shakespeare was intimate, and one in which class and the perspectives of class difference were an important influence on Shakespeare. These complex nested storylines are marked by an expressive manipulation of chiaroscuro light in Craine’s visual representations and by the interwoven nested narratives that typify Craine’s work.
Craine’s graphic adaptation is rare and unconventional, and while “critics can't figure out what songs by The Clash have to do with the Bard” (Guelph Mercury), the work holds great potential to reach out to children, and other age groups that may be uninterested in Shakespeare or the time period in which he lived. The graphic novel format allows for sophisticated, intermingled historical narratives, “complex image systems,” and underlying themes to be seamlessly blended into an entertaining and manageable read (Artist Statement). The graphics engage the reader literally to “view” the actual text multiple times, as something new emerges with every read-through. Moreover, Craine’s illustration of Shakespeare as “a grub in a world full of cultural anxiety” who rises up to “elevate theatrical medium from disposable pop to … masterpiece” is an inspiration to anyone who ever felt they couldn’t relate to Shakespeare (Craine, 21-23).
Danielle Van Wagner (with Daniel Fischlin)
Nick Craine: Artist’s Statement:
Parchment of Light: The Life & Death of William Shakespeare
Parchment of Light is an intersection of fact, conjecture, epic poem, pop art, and allegory using the deconstruction of Shakespeare to find its audience. The work spans approximately 300 pages and follows Will’s life from the cradle to the grave. Will’s experience is the spine and other worlds (lives of actor, Richard Burbage, Czech engraver, Wenceslaus Hollar, Queen Elizabeth along with common ship builders and tinkers, explorers and early astronomers become framing devices for portraying Shakespeare’s world.
The work consolidates all the study and conjecture of Shakespearean history into one expansive visual telling––to become a go-to reference text for the Elizabethan period. Though, not just a play-by-play of the known facts of his life, Parchment of Light attempts a meaningful telling that views Will as a punk rocker – a grub in a world full of cultural anxiety and religious dynamism––an obsessive observer who loved human beings and, ultimately, someone who strove to become a gentleman and in doing so found acceptance of himself.
Will elevated Theatre from disposable pop to meaningful, complex structure and, eventually, masterpiece. The comic book is the artistic gutter of our times. To portray Will’s life inside a comic strip narrative makes the telling itself a relentless artistic action. Using the basic vernacular of comics, the narrative is injected with complex image systems sculpting high art out of bubble gum. The action subverts expectations and parallels Will’s own artistic experiences.
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External Links:
To buy a copy of Parchment of Light click here.
Disclaimer: This site has been designed with only non-commercial, academic uses in mind. Although every effort has been made to secure permission for materials uploaded on the CASP site, in some circumstances we have been unable to locate copyright holders. Links may be made to our site but under no conditions are the texts and images to be copied and mounted onto another site server. Researchers using the site should accredit it following standard MLA guidelines on how to do so. Correct citation of information from the site is as follows:
Fischlin, Daniel. Canadian Adaptations of Shakespeare Project. University of Guelph. 2004.
